If you have a propensity for writing and you can slay with your prose, consider writing an ebook. While the market has certainly become saturated as of late, books that help teach people about a technical topic still sell extremely well. This is a great source of passive income but does require a large amount of effort at the outset before any money is generated.

Instead, go with a self-hosted site (like my blog here is)—this means your blog will be hosted on your own server and you’ll have full control over it. There are tons of highly reputable, affordable companies you can choose a web hosting plan with to get your website online, like Bluehost, A2 Hosting, Dreamhost or one of these monthly web hosting services.

Promotion. You don’t need to buy digital ads to promote your classes, but it’s definitely worth your while to drum up support by email – sending out targeted blasts to your professional and personal networks – and social media accounts. As you gain students, reputable platforms like Udemy will boost your visibility, doing some of the hard promotional work for you. However, you must opt into its extensive course marketing network.
Not only will this multiply the money you’re bringing in in a serious way, but it protects you against any sudden changes in the market or in your business. Remember that old saying about putting all your eggs in one basket? A few hours a week committed to just one or two of the following opportunities will put you in a much stronger position to be financially safe and independent.
19. eBay – Of course you can’t read an article about making money online that doesn’t mention eBay. You can start an eBay store and get serious about it or you can just sell some stuff to declutter your home. Either way, I’ve made my fair share from selling on eBay and it’s still a popular way to earn money. If you decide to start an actual eBay store, you’ll want to find a drop-ship business like Doba that will store and ship items straight to your customers so you don’t have to deal with an inventory.
If you decide to stick with Getaround after the 30-day free trial, you’ll pay a one-time fee of $99 for a Connect™ installation and a flat fee of $20 per month. The Connect™ allows renters to locate and unlock your car straight from the app so you don’t have to deal with lost or stolen keys. It also comes with added security features like tamper detection, GPS tracking, and engine lock.
Tutor students. Many families prefer the flexibility of using an online tutor. Depending on your background, you could be simply helping a child with homework or providing college-level support. You need to have your own computer and high speed internet. Experience required differs among companies. Some require “strong experience,” while others require a specific educational background. However, most companies do require a college degree.
20. Etsy – If you like to create arts and crafts, you can sell them on Etsy.It’s completely free to open an Etsy store. You simply sign up, post pictures of your creations and starting selling. You can choose your payment option, but PayPal is generally the easiest. Etsy makes it easy to sell and keep track of your inventory. There is a small listing fee and they take 3.5% of every sale you make.
Though your answers must be honest and make sense, you don’t need to devote your full attention to online surveys – music to multitaskers’ ears. And you can invest as much or as little time as you like. Individual surveys can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to 20 or 30 minutes to complete, and you can do as many or as few as you want in one sitting.

Working online could actually earn you more if you play your cards well. For example, if you take on two jobs a day, you will earn less than a person who does five jobs a day. Your earnings fully depend on how much expertise you have and how willing you are to work. This means that you get value for your time and effort as opposed to working in an office for a fixed salary at the end of the month.

EBay. EBay is one of the most popular websites in the world. That means it’s an excellent way to attract lots of eyeballs to your unwanted items, fast. Initially designed as an auction site for DIY sellers, it’s now primarily a venue for fixed-price – and often heavily discounted – sales by professional merchants. As long as you include high-quality photographs and thorough descriptions in your product listings, you can likely break through the noise. EBay’s fee schedule is complex, but as a general rule, expect to lose 10% of your final selling price to the site’s commission.
Has anyone ever told you you have a voice for radio? Are you great at creating original characters with just your voice? There are tons of people looking to pay for quality voice overs for their corporate videos, animation series, or educational videos. Check out Fiverr and UpWork or create a profile on a specialized site like Voices.com or The Voice Realm to get started making money online doing voice overs.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission. When you purchase a product using my one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep things like my 25,000 word ultimate guide to starting a blog free of charge to you. Know that I also only recommend products I personally stand behind.

Don't sacrifice morals for a quick buck — At the outset, you'll want to do all sorts of things to make money online, but don't sacrifice your morals for a quick buck. Not only will you put people off, but you'll lose Google's trust. You also shouldn't concern yourself with things like Adsense or other ads on a blog before you have around 100,000 visitors per day. Yes, per day.
If Uber Eats or Lyft weren’t a great fit, Uber is yet another option. By driving with Uber, you have the flexibility to drive whenever you want, which means you can start making money as soon as you are approved to drive, and it’s all on your schedule. They’re currently offering a $1,050 bonus to new drivers in our area (Virginia Beach, VA) but that amount will vary based on your regional market. See their website for more details.
So, I put together a free master course for you to take that spreads out all of the work involved in starting a blog, into a series of action-packed lessons. My free course breaks the entire process of starting a blog down into an incredibly simple 7-day process for going from 0 to brainstorming the best blog post ideas, publishing (and promoting) your first blog post in just 1 week. We also cover beginner and advanced ways to learn how to make money blogging in the course. I can’t recommend it enough.

Drive Traffic. The more traffic your site receives, the more revenue it produces and the more valuable it becomes to prospective buyers. Your traffic-driving strategy will depend on a host of factors, including your budget and target audience. But it’s likely to involve some combination of organic SEO, paid search ads, content partnerships, pay per click (PPC) advertising, and social media marketing.

Managing Editor. Managing editors supervise and direct editorial teams, including lower-level editors. These jobs are harder to come by and require more of your time, but temporary arrangements look great on your resume. If you lack much formal editing experience, start with smaller blogs and niche publications with modest budgets and limited content needs. Some publications don’t have enough work for a full-time editor, making it feasible to string together a handful of part-time editing gigs or try out a single position to see how it suits you.

Check with your local bank to see if they're giving away cash bonuses for opening up accounts. Banks run promotions like this all the time, so grab some real cash quickly if you're in need. It won't break the bank (no pun intended) but it will give you a quick $50 or $100 -- maybe even more -- when you really need it. You might need to deposit a minimum amount of cash (usually in the thousands) in order to qualify for these types of accounts (but not always).
If you’re not ready to go through the complex process of setting up a full online business, you can make a little easy money by filling out online surveys or doing paid micro-tasks, like odd jobs on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website. You can also try selling some items on eBay or putting a few designs up on a free CafePress account to try to make a little side income. With any of these approaches, it may take some time for you to get any payout!
Research individual companies in your desired niche: If possible, it’s always better to become an affiliate directly with a company (if they have an internal affiliate program), as no one else will be dipping into your commission rate. This is the preferred route for most of the prominent affiliate marketers, including Pat Flynn. Unfortunately, it’s also the most work, as you’ll have to do the research yourself to see who offers programs (they’re usually listed in the website footer).
And while it will take time to build up a big-enough audience to attract advertisers and other ways to make extra income from your podcast, the opportunity is there. John Lee Dumas interviews entrepreneurs seven days a week for his podcast Entrepreneur on Fire and now makes more than $200,000 a month from it. In fact, John publishes all his income online and showed that he’s made almost $13 million since launching in 2012.
Whether you have a website or are still dreaming up ideas for a blog, you can also look into affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you partner with brands and businesses within the content of your website. If you mention a product or service, you link to that produce or service using a unique affiliate code you received when you signed up for that particular affiliate program. From there, you’ll make money any time someone buys a product or service through your link.
FDIC insured with over $1 billion in assets securely saved, there’s no account minimum, overdraft prevention, and a 1% cash bonus on your account balances. If you’re terrible about saving, take 10 minutes out of your day and set up your account and get a free $5. Think of the 1% quarterly cash bonus as your future self thanking you for being more responsible about your finances.
There’s plenty of work and clients to be found. If you know where to look. To start, you need to know if there is enough demand for your skill to make it worth the effort to go out looking for work. Start by searching for freelance postings on sites like Flexjobs, SolidGigs, Contena or one of the dozens of other skill-specific freelance job boards.
Once you’ve gathered a list, put together an outreach email template (as you’ll be doing this over and over) that’s short and clear with expectations. Tell your potential interviewee who you are, what your podcast is about, and what you’re asking of them. Do a few test interviews with friends and family to make sure everything is being recorded at the quality you want and then book your first episode.
It works in essentially the same way as the phone apps that were mentioned earlier. If you don’t mind having Google know what you do on a daily basis (anonymously), you can make money by letting them monitor your Internet usage. They use the information they gather to help them market and increase the functionality of their advertising programs when targeting users that are similar to you.
You know those top-down cooking or craft videos you just can’t seem to get away from these days? There are people out there making a living from them, especially those that also run their own food blogs or travel blogs. In fact, a whopping 78% of B2C companies depend on user-generated content (like these videos) for their marketing campaigns. You can sign up as a creator on a site like Darby Smart and potentially work with brands like Nordstrom, Mattel, and BarkBox. Or, learn how to master PPC advertising and you can use the content to build your YouTube following and monetize through ads and views.
Other opportunities are easier to get but not nearly as lucrative. Many market research companies have video-watching verticals through which participants can earn points for each view. Swagbucks and InboxDollars are two legitimate options. You can earn points with them, which you can redeem for gift cards and occasionally cash. The hourly rates working out to less than minimum wage in most cases but aren’t bad for a few spare minutes of your time here and there.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking this will be a passive source of income—you’re on call whenever you have a guest and you’ll always need to keep the place clean for incoming visitors. On top of just renting on Airbnb, consider offering your guests paid add-ons, like Lauren Gheysens’, Royal Day Out in London, England—where she gives visitors a local’s only tour of the city, complete with bespoke 18th century costumes.
Build your audience on a course community: If you’re just getting started building an audience for yourself and want to leverage communities already actively looking for content you can choose to host and sell your online course on a site like Skillshare or Udemy. These are easy, cost-effective ways to build an audience and test your niche to see if there’s demand for it.

Find an audience for your passion or hobby and you’re all set to make money online doing something you love via a niche website. That of course, is easier said than done. Creating a profitable niche website takes time and is not intended for the faint of heart. But, if you can hurdle the steep challenges and positively answer a few key questions on whether the website business idea you’re thinking about is profitable, then you can begin building it and eventually monetize through advertising, affiliates, or other relevant digital products.

What are the best ways to make money right away? While a search online when you're in need of some fast cash will produce millions of results, not all will be legitimate. It's up to you to filter through the so-called noise. These 32 strategies will help put you in the black, even if it's in a very small way. Once you are, resume planning and focusing on the bigger picture.

Outsourcing is the new and dominant wave of the business world. As businesses shed employees, they increasingly turn to independent contractors to supply what in-house staff used to do. One of the ways they do this is through virtual assistants. These are people who provide certain tasks online. Businesses can use virtual assistants as much or as little as they need to. If you can make yourself available to multiple businesses, you might have plenty of work without ever leaving your house.
Giving Assistant. Giving Assistant puts a charitable spin on online shopping discounts. Functionally, it’s similar to Qmee and Piggy, but users have the option to donate their earnings to their favorite charities. Of course, those who prefer to pocket their cash still can. You can reliably earn 5% cash back with Giving Assistant and more at select merchants.
Start With Freelance Copywriting Platforms. When I first started working as a freelance writer, I was shocked to discover just how many freelance writing jobs were available for the taking. You can find work on dozens of reputable websites, from general-purpose freelance platforms like Upwork to writing-only portals such as Textbroker. These gigs don’t pay handsomely – starting writers earn little more than $0.01 per word on Textbroker, for instance. And the writing is often monotonous: lots of product descriptions, ad copy, press releases, and throwaway blog posts. But they’re great for getting your foot in the door, learning what editors expect from freelance writers, and becoming a better writer overall.
Companies will pay you to virtually sit on mock juries to give attorneys and other jury consultants feedback on cases they are currently handling. Think of these as focus groups. The cases are real, but your verdict will do little more than give those involved a prediction of how things might go when it's time to go to court. You can earn fees ranging from $5 to $60. Be sure to read all the disclaimers and details. If this sounds interesting go to eJury.com or OnlineVerdict.com to find a case.
Next, you need to set up and build your YouTube channel. Your YouTube channel is your home base for all your content. If you already have a Google account for Gmail or Google Drive, then you can use that to log-in to YouTube and start setting up your channel. Pick a username that works for you and is memorable (if you’re using an existing Google account you’ll have to edit your username in Google+).

If you are great at typing fast and transcribing, this is for you! By signing up at Transcribe Me, you get to work on tasks where you are expected to turn audios and videos into text form. All that you need is a computer connected to the internet and your transcription skills. Tracking of your weekly work is easy and in real-time. You can request payment at any time as long as you have a minimum balance of $20. Payments are fast and secure way through PayPal every Thursday before 9 a.m. EST.

Another way to utilize your talent and business skills is to run corporate workshops online. Businesses are always looking for unique ways to help educate their workforce, and if you can package your talents into a day or half-day long session, you can sell that to companies all over the world to make money online. Start by building a portfolio and then reaching out on LinkedIn to influencers at relevant companies to see if they would be interested in you teaching their team.
If you love kids, sign up for Care.com or SitterCity to spend a few hours a week babysitting. These websites verify both babysitters and those seeking sitters with background checks, so you can ensure you're conversing with a reliable source. Babysitting rates vary based on years of experience, number of children, and hours per week. According to ZipRecruiter, the average hourly rate for a babysitter is $28. Use Care.com's calculator to plug in your experience and find out how much your should be making an hour as a babysitter.
That’s where you — the Facebook ads specialist — can come in. If you learn how to effectively run campaigns and generate leads for local small businesses, you can earn anywhere from $1,000 – $2,000 per month per client. You don’t need to have a degree or prior experience in the field to get started, and as your portfolio of clients expands, you can start to up your rates and charge more.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. Most of the software and apps you use on a regular basis are made by massive companies or established development studios. Well, yes. But many successful apps, particularly those in the Apple and Google stores, are created and marketed by individuals and small businesses. In fact, independent developers made $20 billion in the App Store in 2016 alone.
We invite readers to respond with questions or comments. Comments may be held for moderation and will be published according to our comment policy. Comments are the opinions of their authors; they do not represent the views or opinions of Money Under 30. Comments have not been reviewed or approved by any advertiser, nor are they reviewed, approved, or endorsed by our partners. It is not our partner’s responsibility to ensure all posts or questions are answered.
Next come the nuts and bolts: choosing and buying a Web domain, hosting and designing your site, and planning content. While this is a lot of work to put in before publishing your first post, resist the temptation to cut corners. You’re laying the foundation, hopefully, for a long-term endeavor. Once you’ve created a quality site and built a following, there are plenty of ways to make money from your blog.
We invite readers to respond with questions or comments. Comments may be held for moderation and will be published according to our comment policy. Comments are the opinions of their authors; they do not represent the views or opinions of Money Under 30. Comments have not been reviewed or approved by any advertiser, nor are they reviewed, approved, or endorsed by our partners. It is not our partner’s responsibility to ensure all posts or questions are answered.
Outsourcing is the new and dominant wave of the business world. As businesses shed employees, they increasingly turn to independent contractors to supply what in-house staff used to do. One of the ways they do this is through virtual assistants. These are people who provide certain tasks online. Businesses can use virtual assistants as much or as little as they need to. If you can make yourself available to multiple businesses, you might have plenty of work without ever leaving your house.

Venue. When you’re first starting out, choose reputable, high-visibility venues for your classes. Don’t expect students to find their way to your personal or professional website before you’ve built a reputation for yourself. Udemy is a great option for budding at-home teachers looking to earn real money from their work. YouTube is another viable option, though you can’t directly charge people to watch your YouTube videos. You’ll need to monetize them indirectly (we explain how in Section 12.)

How many email newsletters are you bombarded with every single day? There’s a reason for that. Email marketing to an actively interested group of email subscribers is one of the best ways to make money online. There have even been million-dollar businesses built from simple email newsletters like TheSkimm, or Mister Spoils. Each newsletter targets a specific type of user with interesting, daily content, while also partnering with relevant companies and affiliates to bring in extra money. If this seems daunting, it’s not. Email marketing tools like MailChimp, ConvertKit, HubSpot and AWeber make it easier than ever to get started with email marketing. Here’s my comparison of ConvertKit vs AWeber vs Mailchimp to review a few of my top picks. Another great option to consider (with the largest free plan available) is SendPulse, with their ability to send up to 15,000 emails per month to 2,500 subscribers, and then affordable plans starting at under $10/month as you grow from there. And regardless of which email service provider you end up going with, it’ll eventually be smart to invest in tools like MailGenius that help increase your email deliverability, avoid spam folders and authenticate new subscribers as they sign up.

Find your niche partners, collaborators, and champions: As you’re creating your course, look for notable people who are also creating content in the space. Look at how their businesses operate and incorporate that into your own plan. You can also reach out to any influencers and make them affiliates for your own course. This way, they’ll be incentivized to share your content with their own audiences (which can be a major way to generate your first sales—it helps if you’re using one of the best CRMs for small business—and start building your own community!)
Some companies like 1-800flowers.com outsource customer-service operations to third-party companies who then hire home-based workers or "agents" to take calls and orders. When you call 1-800-flowers, you may be speaking with Rebecca Dooley, a retired police officer and employee of Alpine Access, a major call-center service. When you dialed the number to 1-800-flowers, your call was automatically routed to Rebecca's spare bedroom in Colorado.
Next come the nuts and bolts: choosing and buying a Web domain, hosting and designing your site, and planning content. While this is a lot of work to put in before publishing your first post, resist the temptation to cut corners. You’re laying the foundation, hopefully, for a long-term endeavor. Once you’ve created a quality site and built a following, there are plenty of ways to make money from your blog.
Domain name trading has been around for the last couple decades, and while most slam-dunk names have long been sold off, there’s still plenty of others that you can get your hands on for relatively cheap and broker as a way to make money online. Before you dive in, however, beware that some experts doubt the long-term viability of this idea for making money online. However, there’s always the chance you might just land on a lucrative domain name for a future billion-dollar company. To get you started, here are some tips from GoDaddy, arguably the world’s largest and most famous repository of domain names.

Clearly, there's a lot of demand on Amazon, and if any product is going to sell, it's going to sell well on Amazon. But the goal here is to source the right products that will easily sell at the world's largest online retailer. Generally, products between $10 and $50 sell very well here. Just be sure to do the right market research before jumping on this bandwagon.

One great way to make money as a kid is to do odd jobs around your home or neighborhood. For example, you might be able to mow the lawn in exchange for allowance money, or offer to babysit a neighbor’s younger children. If you’re crafty, try selling stuff you’ve made online or at a local arts and crafts fair. You may also be able to make a little money by making helpful or entertaining videos and posting them on YouTube!

You can find plenty of translation jobs on general freelance platforms like Upwork, but the quality of opportunities on nonspecialized platforms tends to be uneven. Earning potential also varies widely. Entry-level, nonspecialized translation work often pays less than $10 per hour, while highly technical jobs can pay more than $50 per hour. Generally speaking, you’ll earn more as you gain experience, improve your fluency, and attain vertical-specific credentials.

VIPKid provides an international learning experience to children in China between the ages of 4-12. Headquartered in Beijing, the company offers fully immersive one-on-one English language instruction provided online by highly qualified teachers. The curriculum is based on the U.S. Common Core State Standards and uses a flipped-classroom approach to foster creativity and critical thinking skills.

Billshark: This service specializes in negotiating common monthly bills. While they don’t claim to be perfect, Billshark says that they have an 85% success rate negotiating bills for cable and satellite TV, cell phones, internet, satellite radio, and home security. Pricing is simple: whatever they are able to save you via negotiation, they take a 40% cut. If they can’t lower your bills, you don’t pay them. Billshark Review
To get started as a game tester, sign up with a reputable network such as Keywords Studio, whose Global Beta Test Network (GBTN) helps game developers push their products to the limit and ensure they go to market with as few bugs as possible. GBTN’s tests typically involve dozens to hundreds of testers around the world running simultaneous tests on different aspects of clients’ games. Most tests are time-limited, project-based affairs. Pay varies but typically ranges from $20 to $50 per hour. Diligent, skilled testers who work part-time can earn $10,000 to $20,000 per year; testers who work at or near full time can easily exceed $50,000 per year.
This is a more technical way to make money online then most of the other strategies given. But you can get an excellent course on how to make it happen with Steve Chou’s Create a Profitable Online Store program. Steve and his wife have built a highly successful online store – selling wedding napkins – and he’s anxious to provide insider secrets to people who sign up for his course..
Research individual companies in your desired niche: If possible, it’s always better to become an affiliate directly with a company (if they have an internal affiliate program), as no one else will be dipping into your commission rate. This is the preferred route for most of the prominent affiliate marketers, including Pat Flynn. Unfortunately, it’s also the most work, as you’ll have to do the research yourself to see who offers programs (they’re usually listed in the website footer).

People often have very unique reasons for wanting to start a blog and make money from home. Some blogs, like this one (DollarSprout), are meant to be informative resources for readers. Other bloggers may opt to share personal sides of their lives. For instance, many people will start a blog to document their fitness journey and inspire others along the way.

Protect Yourself With Enforceable Contracts. You don’t have to be a lawyer to draft an enforceable freelance contract. You just need to find a legitimate freelance contract template and modify it for your use. It’s fine to use a client-provided contract as long as you review it thoroughly, ask piercing questions if necessary, and seek an attorney’s advice when in doubt.
This could be a smart strategy if you live in an area where real estate is outrageously expensive, or you don’t want the hassle and expense of traveling all over the country visiting potential properties. Plus, if you are new to single-family real estate investing, letting a place like Roofstock guide you through the process is a great way to get your feet wet.
Pricing and Deals. As with any professional pursuit, you need to know how much your teaching skills are worth and price them accordingly. Unfortunately, at-home teaching is a competitive business, so you’re likely to find someone who charges less for similar work. Ways to get around this include multi-course discounts, package deals, and complimentary products or information for early sign-ups.
Giving Assistant. Giving Assistant puts a charitable spin on online shopping discounts. Functionally, it’s similar to Qmee and Piggy, but users have the option to donate their earnings to their favorite charities. Of course, those who prefer to pocket their cash still can. You can reliably earn 5% cash back with Giving Assistant and more at select merchants.
The virtual assistant workforce is global, which means two things. First, if you’re in the U.S. or another high-cost country, you’ll likely be undercut by English- and Spanish-speaking professionals in cheaper markets. Second, you’ll need to either stick to clients in or near your time zone or be willing to work odd hours. A reasonable starting wage for North America-based VAs is $10 to $20 per hour, but competent VAs command much higher rates.
You know those top-down cooking or craft videos you just can’t seem to get away from these days? There are people out there making a living from them, especially those that also run their own food blogs or travel blogs. In fact, a whopping 78% of B2C companies depend on user-generated content (like these videos) for their marketing campaigns. You can sign up as a creator on a site like Darby Smart and potentially work with brands like Nordstrom, Mattel, and BarkBox. Or, learn how to master PPC advertising and you can use the content to build your YouTube following and monetize through ads and views.

If so, chances are good that you are not earning as much interest on your savings as you could (and should) be earning. At the time of this writing, the average annual percentage yield (APY) on a savings account in the United States is 0.09%. That means that $1,000 sitting in a savings account will only earn $9 in interest if it sits there for an entire year.

The first follows the startup path we outlined above: You have a disruptive idea for an app or piece of software, you validate the idea with real customers, and then raise money to hire developers or a development studio to build, launch, and scale your software. If you’ve done everything right, your software will be accepted to the Apple and Google Stores and you’ll make money every time someone downloads it or pays for a premium feature.
People often have very unique reasons for wanting to start a blog and make money from home. Some blogs, like this one (DollarSprout), are meant to be informative resources for readers. Other bloggers may opt to share personal sides of their lives. For instance, many people will start a blog to document their fitness journey and inspire others along the way.
Moreover, one has the freedom of dressing and can work in casual clad, not necessarily suiting up. For the parents who have to split between home chores like childcare responsibilities, are able to create balance between work and home. One does not have to commute thus saving on gas and also commuting time. Convenience for example in sales where one is closer to clients than when at work. Finally, there is access to a wider pool of applicants for example the disabled who prefer to work from home.
Double check yourself, before you double wreck yourself. Make sure everything you send to a company, whether a résumé, an email or a portfolio, is good to go. Double check your grammar and wording, and for God’s sake use spell check! This is especially important when it comes to the company’s name. Don’t spell their name wrong and be sure to type it how they type it (e.g. Problogger, not Pro Blogger).